Because 80 percent of adults who ever smoked started before they were 18, many tobacco-control advocates stress a youth-centered approach to smoking cessation programs. But little is known about how social factors influence teens' use of tobacco.

Key Findings

Black students are much less likely to smoke than whites; the odds of current smoking for black students are 26 percent less than those for whites.

Although blacks performed more poorly than whites in school, they reported better psycho-social experiences than did white students.

Preliminary results from the sixth wave of the Philadelphia Educational Longitudinal Study showed that there were few attitudinal differences on perceived benefits of smoking between black and white students who had ever been regular smokers, including smoking as a source of enjoyment, a way to deal with stress or feel older, and as something to do with friends, or whether smoking was cool.

Funding

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided a $30,000 grant to support the study between April 2000 and December 2001.